— The problem with all those things you mention, education and whatnot, is those are chronic problems, as opposed to acute problems. We fund the things that are urgent, that everyone can rally around and more or less agree upon. And everyone agrees on funding the troops that are stationed abroad. You fund some advisors, then you inch it toward full engagement, and pretty soon no one wants to be the one denying body armor to our young people in uniform. So we find the money. We sell bonds, we borrow money. But will we get that kind of momentum to borrow money from China to pay for some national education reform? No. That’s not an acute problem. If there were an alien invasion tomorrow, and the only way to win against the aliens would be to fully fund Head Start, then sure, we would find that money.
— So it’s not a matter of possibility, but of will?
— What’s that?
— Will.
— Of course. Everything is a matter of will.
— My mom always said that.
— Well, she was right.
— Not often.
— Son, did you bring me here to talk about your mother?
— But don’t you think there should be a plan for people like me, for the guys you were talking about, the vets whose brains are scrambled?
— What sort of plan?
— Don’t you think …
— What, son?
— Don’t you think that the vast majority of the chaos in the world is caused by a relatively small group of disappointed men?
—
—
— I don’t know. Could be.
— The men who haven’t gotten the work they expected to get. The men who don’t get the promotion they expected. The men who are dropped in a jungle or a desert and expected video games and got mundanity and depravity and friends dying like animals. These men can’t be left to mix with the rest of society. Something bad always happens.
— Something bad like this. Like you bringing me here. I agree.
— When I see these massacres at malls or offices, I think, There by the Lake of God go I.
— Grace of God.
— What’s that?
— It’s “There but for the grace of God.”
— No. It’s “there by the Lake of God.”
— It’s “grace of God.”
— It can’t be.
— Son. It is.
— I’ve always had this picture in my mind of the Lake of God. And you walk by it.
— There’s no Lake of God.
— It was like this huge underground lake, and it was dark and cool and peaceful and you could go there and float there and be forgiven.
— I don’t know what to tell you, son. I’ve been teaching the Bible for thirty-eight years and there is no Lake of God in that book. There’s a Lake of Fire, but I don’t think that’s the place you’re picturing.
— See, even that.
— Even what?
— Even that’s a sign that the world has misused people like me.
How could I not know that, the difference between the Lake of God and the Lake of Fire?
— I don’t know if that misunderstanding is symptomatic of a societal failure. You got your lakes confused.
— But it is symptomatic. You and I read the same books and hear the same sermons and we come away with different messages. That has to be evidence of some serious problem, right? I mean, I shouldn’t have been left to live among the rest of society. There were so many days I looked at it all and wanted it wiped away, wanted it on fire.
— Sounds like you had a radicalizing moment, son. Were you beaten as a child, something like that?
— No sir.
— Saw some terrible thing that changed you?
— Do you remember the other guy with us in that car that day?
— No, I can’t say that I do.
— You don’t? It was unusual for our town to have a kid like that. He was half Vietnamese. Don Banh. You remember a kid like that?
— I’m sorry, I don’t. He was a friend of yours?
— He’s dead now.
— I’m sorry to hear that.
— He was shot.
— He was a soldier?
— No. Just in his backyard.
— I’m sorry, son. That’s too young. I’m truly sorry.
— I’m not saying that was some radicalizing moment for me. I feel like I had some fairly apocalyptic thoughts before that.
— Most young men do.
— I’ve tried to explain these thoughts to people but they get scared. They don’t understand. Or they pretend they don’t understand.
— Try me.
— Well, every day, about half of every day I’m among people in a city, I picture my arm sweeping across the city, wiping it all clean. Like it was a model set up on a card table, and I could just sweep it all onto the floor. Okay?
— Okay.
— You want to hear more?
— Sure.
— I’ll be walking down some crowded street and I’ll start boiling inside and I picture myself parting all these people like Moses with the Red Sea. You know, the people disappear, the buildings dissolve and when I’m done there’s all this empty space, and it’s quieter, and there aren’t all those people and all their dirty thoughts and idiotic talking and opinions. And that vision actually gives me peace. When I picture the landscape bare, free of all human noise and filth, I can relax.
— Maybe you should live in the country.
— That’s not funny. I mean, that’s not the solution. I just wish I could function better in rooms, in buildings, in a line at the grocery store. And sometimes I do. But sometimes it makes me so fucking tense. I need to get out, drive awhile, get to the ocean as fast as I can.
— Son, I’m realizing I don’t know your name.
— Thomas.
— Thomas, nothing you say is unprecedented. There are others like you. Millions of men like you. Some women, too. And I think this is a result of you being prepared for a life that does not exist. You were built for a different world. Like a predator without prey.
— So why not find a place for us?
— What’s that?
— Find a place for us.
— Who should?
— You, the government. You of all people should have known that we needed a plan. You should have sent us all somewhere and given us a task.
— But not to war.
— No, I guess not.
— So what then?
— Maybe build a canal.
— You want to build a canal?
— I don’t know.
— No, I don’t get the impression you do.
— You’ve got to put this energy to use, though. It’s pent up in me and it’s pent up in millions like me. The only time I feel right is when I’m driving, or once in a while during a fight.
— So you box?
— No.
— Oh. Let me see your hands.
— They’re messed up right now.
— That they are. Son, who are you fighting?
— I don’t know. People.
— Do you win?
— Win what?
— These fights.
— No. Not really.
— Thomas, you know we can’t round up every confused young man and send them to some remote region. Even if I agreed with you, which I do, to some extent at least. I mean, this is why so many soldiers stay in the Army and why so many prisoners end up back in prison. They cannot hack polite society. They’re bored and they feel caged.
— But there’s no evidence of a plan, sir.
— What plan?
— Any plan. I mean, wasn’t that what Australia was all about? Some convict colony? We could have done that on the moon. All I ever wanted to do was get off this fucking planet and go to the next one, but there’s no way to do it. And Don, too. He didn’t belong in regular society after what happened to him.